Kitty Grutzmacher had contended with poor hearing for a decade, but the problem had worsened over the past year. Even with her hearing aids, “there was little or no sound,” she said.

“I was avoiding going out in groups. I stopped playing cards, stopped going to Bible study, even going to church.”

Her audiologist was unable to offer Ms. Grutzmacher, a retired nurse in Elgin, Ill., a solution. But she found her way to the cochlear implant program at Northwestern Medicine.

There, Krystine Mullins, an audiologist who assesses patients’ hearing and counsels them about their options, explained that surgically implanting this electronic device usually substantially improved a patient’s ability to understand speech.

“I had never even thought about it,” Ms. Grutzmacher said.

That she was 84 was, in itself, immaterial. “As long as you’re healthy enough to undergo surgery, age is not a concern,” Dr. Mullins said. One recent Northwestern implant patient had been 99.

Some patients need to ponder this decision, given that after the operation, clearer hearing still requires months of practice and adaptation, and the degree of improvement is hard to predict. “You can’t try it out in advance,” Dr. Mullins said.

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